My name is Acasha Mick and I will be sending monthly communications to all Senior parents. I can’t believe we have SENIORS! My how time flies when you’re having fun! I am very much looking forward to wrapping up this amazing chapter in our children’s lives together. Here’s a glimpse of what’s coming up this month for our seniors:

Core Classes: A summary of activities and lessons are listed under each class below.

Please click on the links to access teachers digital portfolio. DP’s can be an amazing resource for students and parents and can be used for finding homework, understand what a teacher is looking for and what’s coming up.

In October, we will continue our exploration of Sustainable Development. We will first tackle a case-study of Bears Ears in preparation for our Senior experiential education trip to Bears Ears. This trip will take place October 8-11. Your student should be well-versed in how we are preparing for this trip, as we are offering substantial student involvement in the preparation, and in leading various parts of the trip. Please contact Lori or Ashley if you have any questions about this piece. When we return from the trip, students will be writing a personal narrative essay, and we will be choosing a local topic for students to analyze through the lens of sustainable development, and develop holistic solutions to offer to our community. In addition to our main project for the fall, we will be helping students through the beginning phases of developing their idea for their Senior Thesis and Senior Project–we encourage you to talk with them about their ideas for their research question and project.

In Math 4 we are studying the Great Recession and the Housing Crisis of 2008. Students are currently building a flow chart to determine the ways in which assets and money flowed between investors, banks, and individuals. The main idea is to understand the ways in which our economy is and is not sustainable. In addition, we have covered expected value computations, exponential growth models, and logistic growth as tools to understand the economy.

Seniors learned how to finalize their college lists in Naviance, are providing documents to teachers and counselor for letters of recommendation and are matching their CommonApp application to their Naviance accounts. Things parents can help their students with include: Reminding them to request and provide documents to teachers and counselors for letters of recommendation, start writing thank you cards for the staff that are writing their letters of recommmendation. Students can update their Naviance accounts and should be working on their essays and college applications. Parents can start preparing to complete the FAFSA by gathering their 2017 taxes, creating FSA Ids for the FAFSA and atteding the FAFSA night at Fort Lewis College on Tuesday, October 2nd from 4:00-7:00pm at the Reed Library

Advisory:

Seniors have been planning for their Bears Ears camping trip in Advisory. When they return from camping, they will do a Grade Check in Advisory. On October 31, we will use Advisory for an All School Pumpkin Carving Contest!

How You Can Support Your Student this Month:

With the added stress of senior year, perhaps providing some extra support by asking questions and checking in with your student on a regular basis could prove beneficial.

Parent FYIs:

There will be a Parent Coffee for all AHS parents this Friday, October 5th at 8:30 at the school. We would love for every parent to join us! Look for more opportunities like this to pop up each month as we work to strengthen our AHS parent community. Also, we would love to enlist some parent volunteers to help out with parking lot/trail monitoring and other tasks around the school. If this sounds like a job for you, please feel free to email me and I will put you in contact with the appropriate staff member.

What Would You Like to Know?

What else do you want to know?

Would you like to meet more parents and grow connection?

Do you have a thought or suggestion on how we can support our students?

Thanks so much for taking the time invest in your student’s education and in AHS! Please feel free to reach out to me with any questions or suggestions you may have. Have a wonderful October and a Happy Halloween!